Quartz Crystal Basics: From Raw Materials to Oscillators

How did the use of quartz crystals come about? The Curie brothers discovered the piezoelectric effect of quartz in the early 1880s. In 1917, Prof. P. Langevin used X-cut plates of quartz to generate and detect sound waves in water. His objective was to provide a means for detecting submarines, and his work led to the development of SONAR. Today this technology is still being used in ultrasonic imaging.